


Some Friendly Advice

by Jubalii



Category: Coco (2017)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Drabble, Gen, Humor, Héctor at the Bar with His Pals, Post-Canon, Short, mentions of counseling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-29
Updated: 2018-03-29
Packaged: 2019-04-14 09:26:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14133147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jubalii/pseuds/Jubalii
Summary: prompt: Imector and 36) "that is a horrible idea"Héctor gets some good advice from a guy at the local bar.Maybe he should look into… professional help?





	Some Friendly Advice

**Author's Note:**

> This is from a prompt post I did on my tumblr. 
> 
> This isn't really otp-ish or romantic, but it's the first thing I thought of when I read the prompt.   
> And counseling is important!

“Héctor.”

Ronaldo was a big skeleton. A  _big_ skeleton, both tall and wide, with frightening markings and extra tattoos on every inch of bone wide enough to work on. When he spoke, everyone in the bar listened. It was hard  _not_ to, with his deep bass voice and growling snarl at the end of every sentence. Héctor looked like a kid next to him, despite his own taller-than-average height. It took everything he had in him not to shrink back when Ronaldo sat next to him, leaning one enormous ulna on the bar and lowering his massive skull until they stared eye to eye.

“You have to get in touch with your feelings,  _amigo_.”

“B-wah?” Ronaldo nodded, palm flat on his beefy ribcage over where his heart once was.  _He must have had a heart the size of a bear_ , Héctor thought absently.

“Yeah. My girl made me go to this counseling shit with her after she joined me here. We fought it out pretty hard the night I died, and she had to go to therapy and—well, you see, they teach you certain things about how to get along and argue, uh…  _constructively_.”

“ _You_ went to counseling?” he managed to say, eyeballing the monstrous figure.  

“You gotta dig  _deep_ , amigo, all the way down to the very bottom. Then, you figure out that the things you  _think_ you’re mad about aren’t really what you’re mad about at all, and then she realizes the same thing, you go home, hit the sheets, have a smoke, life goes on.” He shrugged, nodding when Toño refilled his beer. “Or death, in our case. But it starts with tuning into those emotions you got in there, squirt.” He poked at Héctor’s sternum, one bony finger nearly enough to span the breadth of it.

“He’s right, you know.” Toño wiped down the counter where Héctor’s arm had left some Shantytown dust. The bartender was used to the young vagabond coming in from time to time; he knew that it was more for company than a need to drink. Hell, that was all any of them really came in for—a place to complain, or cry, or fight before heading back to whatever mundane existence they led on this side of the proverbial veil.

At least Héctor was looking a little better since his crazy night on  _Día de Muertos_. Toño had, like most of the Land of the Dead, been watching the Sunrise Spectacular on pay-per-view from his room above his bar. He’d spit toothpaste all over the mirror at the sight of Héctor  _onscreen_ , talking like he knew Ernesto de la Cruz, watching the singer throw a living kid over a ledge along with the rest of their world. He’d realized that maybe, just  _maybe_ Héctor’s tales weren’t drunken lies after all.

“I am in tune with my emotions!” Héctor protested, as if he heard the bartender’s train of thought. “I’m a musician; it comes with the job.”

“You’re not in tune enough,” Ronaldo argued. “Look, I thought I was, too. You’d laugh if you heard the way I screamed at Gina over how she folded my jeans. I like my creases in the  _front,_ not the  _side_ ,” he explained, a tense snarl behind his teeth as he jabbed invisible jeans in midair. “But really? I was angry because she wasn’t listening to me or taking my emotions into account. When you say it like  _that_ , well—” he weighed the words in his hands. “It doesn’t sound so crazy after all.”

“But—” Héctor stopped himself, shaking his head. “Look, I don’t need to know how I feel. I know how I feel: I love her. But I just need to know how to  _talk_ to her, that’s all. I got another chance at something great, and I don’t want to mess it up!”

“I’m telling you how.” Ronaldo fished his wallet out from the jeans hanging low on his pelvis, digging around until he produced a small laminated card. “Here. You need to go to this Imelda’s house and tell her straight up that you want to see Dr. Abril Hernandez.” Héctor rolled his eyes but took the card anyway.

“That… is a horrible idea.” He read the card with a pursed frown, shaking his head. “I already know what she’ll say; it’s the same thing I’m telling you right now. We don’t need  _marriage counseling_. That sort of—that thing was never around when we were alive, anyway! At least, I don’t’ think so…. Anyway,” he continued, waving the card in the air and fishing for his tequila with the other hand, “she’s just going to throw a shoe at me for even suggesting it.”

“Just give it a try, man!” Ronaldo crossed his arms. “Or are you chicken?”

“I’m not chicken!”

“Then go. Talk to her. Go to the doctor.” He set his jaw, glaring down at the skinny hobo beside him. “You both need a safe space to talk through your issues. Trust me, you’ll thank me later.”

“I think you should do it, too,” Toño added.

“As much junk as you tell me when you’ve got a few bottles in you, it’ll be a lot better to tell someone who can actually offer better advice.”


End file.
